Unemployment:13.2% Of Young People Out Of Work In August

Arlington, VA – Generation Opportunity, a national, nonpartisan youth advocacy organization, is announcing its Millennial Jobs Report for August 2015. The data is non-seasonally adjusted (NSA) and is specific to 18-29 year olds:

The effective (U-6) unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds, which adjusts for labor force participation by including those who have given up looking for work, is 13.2 percent (NSA). The (U-3) unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds is 8.1 percent (NSA).

The declining labor force participation rate has created an additional 1.767 million young adults that are not counted as “unemployed” by the U.S. Department of Labor because they are not in the labor force, meaning that those young people have given up looking for work due to the lack of jobs.

The effective (U-6) unemployment rate for 18-29 year old African-Americans is 17.6 percent (NSA); the (U-3) unemployment rate is 15.1 percent (NSA).

The effective (U-6) unemployment rate for 18-29 year old Hispanics is 13.6 percent (NSA); the (U-3) unemployment rate is 9.5 percent (NSA).

The effective (U-6) unemployment rate for 18-29 year old women is 11.0 percent (NSA); the (U-3) unemployment rate is 7.9 percent (NSA).

Millennials celebrating Labor Day with unemployment

Generation Opportunity National Spokeswoman Patrice Lee issued the following statement:

“Millions of millennials have no work to celebrate this Labor Day Weekend. Lacking employable skills that can lead to a good job, college grads and non-grads still struggle to find a job in this economic recovery.

“Policymakers should support 21st-century reforms to our education system that help all young people. Instead, they cling to tired solutions based on the model that touts a four-year college degree as the only way to get a good job. That model is broken:It graduates students with record-high loan debt and stigmatizes those who don’t go to college. We need to reboot our education system to prioritize expanding choice, lowering education cost and debt, and preparing our youth for available employment opportunities.”

Generation Opportunity is a national, nonpartisan organization advocating for economic opportunity for young people through less government and more freedom.